Steven Soderbergh adds disaster movie to his long list of film genres as he traces the global spread of a deadly, unknown virus in Contagion, which had its world premiere in Venice.

The film begins in old-fashioned countdown style. On day two, as Gwyneth Paltrow dips into a bowl of nuts at an airport and complains to her lover on the phone that she has the sniffles, the virus is on the loose and, as she hands over her credit card to pay, the camera follows the chain of germs – on to the bartender's hand, to the till machine, to the glass on the bar – like some commercial for hand sanitiser.

Soderbergh, a skilled and energetic film-maker, quickly introduces us to a global cast: Matt Damon back home in Minneapolis, Marion Cotillard at the World Health Organisation in Geneva, a supermodel falling ill in London, Jude Law as a campaigning blogger in San Francisco (for some reason trying out an Australian accent and cloth cap), a waiter coughing over everyone in Kowloon, Kate Winslet as an "epidemic intelligence officer" receiving instructions from Laurence Fishburne (I don't know what his job is, but when you get instructions from Fishburne, you do what you're told).

All the while an urgent electronic score underlines the importance of action and the speed of this virus's spread.

Winslet, too, pulls off the trick of looking capable and knowledgable as she drills local government officers in how to close schools, deal with panic and how to make giant isolation wards out of sports arenas.

In a hospital mortuary, Paltrow is having her head sawn open (didn't they chop it off in Seven, too?) and a doctor, peering at her massive brain, tells his assistant: "Oh my God – step away from the table." So much for a macrobiotic diet, then.

Although he has done this multistranded narrative stuff before in Traffic, Soderbergh borrows from fast-talking TV shows such as ER and CSI to explain "the science part" – and it is most effective. I was shuffling nervously in my seat, edging away from the sniffling man next to me. Nobody shook hands or embraced after this screening.

With the sort of all-star cast you used to find in 1970s movies such as The Towering Inferno or Airport, Soderbergh also probes the global political systems in place to cope with such outbreaks, dredging up stats from Sars panics, Aids epidemics and even the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918 which claimed up to 50 million lives. The film is filled with computer screens, phones, video conference calls, graphics and charts. It is as much about the spread of communication and technology as it is about a virus.

While Law's blogger preaches homeopathic cures – provoking riots outside health food shops – society goes into meltdown and Contagion becomes part zombie movie, part pharmaceutical industry satire. The film settles on the US aspect of the drama – Chicago shut down by the army, the president goes underground – and there are unnerving images recallingthe aftermaths of 11 September and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

With Soderbergh shooting and editing his own films, Contagion is well-assembled and propulsive, though like the virus it loses momentum. Refreshingly, the virus doesn't appear to be a metaphor for consumerism or politics. This is a straight-up movie, serious but, crucially, also slightly silly in the knowing Soderbergh style, always aware that it's a disaster movie, and not a documentary.